Transition between nonthermal and thermal ablation of metallic targets under the strike of high-fluence ultrashort laser pulses

Abstract

The mutual transition dynamics between nonthermal and thermal dominant ablation processes is investigated in the hole-drilling and line-scribing experiments on aluminum samples with intense 50 fs to 24 ps laser pulses. It is found that a critical pulse width that separates the two different ablation regimes monotonically reduces with the increasing laser fluence. Theoretical analyses suggest that the complex interplay between photomechanical stress fragmentation and phase explosion could be responsible for these observations. A semiempirical transition law between the two ablation regimes is introduced, which is consistent with measured experimental data.